In the first presidential debate of this election season, Senator John Kerry showed the world once again how much he distrusts America, its military strength, and its moral leadership. During the September 30th debate, in response to one of Jim Lehrer's questions, Kerry said the following:

Right now the president is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to research bunker-busting nuclear weapons. The United States is pursuing a new set of nuclear weapons. It doesn't make sense. You talk about mixed messages. We're telling other people,“You can't have nuclear weapons,” but we're pursuing a new nuclear weapon that we might even contemplate using. Not this president. I'm going to shut that program down, and we're going to make it clear to the world we're serious about containing nuclear proliferation.

Someone should remind Kerry that those “bunker-busting nuclear weapons” would reduce American troop casualties, assist our military in annihilating hardened terrorist positions – and could have killed Osama bin Laden as he hid in the caverns of Tora Bora, with zero loss of American military forces.

He should be the first one seeking to reap the weapon’s benefits. After all, Kerry claimed that getting rid of bin Laden and reducing U.S. casualties would be his top priorities. Instead, Kerry reserved some of his most passionate vitriol of the debate for these weapons, boldly proclaiming he will“shut down” such a program.

This must be music to the ears of thousands of terrorists around the world. Experience has shown that terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan have a propensity to hide in caves and bunkers buried deep inside mountains. Extracting them with conventional weapons and combat techniques would inflict high casualties on our troops. Under such treacherous conditions, a bunker-busting nuclear bomb would solve the problem quickly and efficiently, while strictly limiting American casualties. Apparently, Kerry would rather sacrifice our troops, than change his politically correct view of nuclear weapons.

When rogue states like Iran and North Korea – about which Kerry worried constantly – build up their nuclear arsenals they will most likely be stored deep underground inside fortified bunkers. Those “bunker-buster” nukes may be the only thing that allows America to neutralize such threats without a massive loss of life. This is hardly the time to reduce our nuclear defense capabilities. The deterrent power of our nuclear arsenal seems to be lost on Kerry. Somehow he has forgotten that it was President Ronald Reagan's buildup of nuclear weapons that eventually brought the Soviet Union to its knees and helped bring freedom to hundreds of millions of people across Europe. America's strong nuclear arsenal helped save countless lives during the Cold War by making global war a losing proposition for the Communists.

John Kerry’s innate opposition to America’s ownership of nuclear weapons is a holdover from his Cold War stance, holding that the U.S. and the USSR were moral equivalents. He berates America for daring to develop new nuclear weapons while asking other countries to stop developing them. Kerry implies that the US is acting hypocritically by owning nuclear bombs, while denying countries like Iran, North Korea, and Libya the ability to develop their own nuclear weapons. He apparently cannot tell the difference between totalitarian and radical regimes, and democratic governments. Madmen, terrorists, and dictators care little about treaties; America’s acquisition of defensive weapons does not spur them on. Yet Kerry shows such disdain for America's nuclear power, that one cannot but wonder whether the demise of“bunker-busting” weapons – despite the overwhelming benefits of such weapons in the global war on terrorism – would be just a first small step in Kerry's policy of eliminating most of America's nuclear missiles. In fact, Teresa Heinz Kerry awarded General George Lee Butler with a Heinz Award in 2001; Butler is a proponent of the complete abolition of all U.S. nuclear weapons.

Kerry's moral equivalency rhetoric has not changed since the Vietnam War. In his 1971 testimony before Congress, he said: “We found most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them.” Unfortunately, he hasn’t flip-flopped on this issue.

At the same time, Kerry called America's defense of freedom in Southeast Asia a“mistake.” This demoralized the troops, depressed the American public, emboldened our enemies, and contributed to the fall of South Vietnam and Cambodia to murderous Communists. Now he is calling the Iraqi war against terror – fought to restore freedom and liberate 23 million people from the tyranny of a murderous madman – another“mistake.”

If this is the kind of “help” that is “on the way” from a Kerry Defense Department, our military can do without it.

Chris Banescu is an attorney, university professor, and public speaker. He also manages the conservative site www.OrthodoxNet.com, writes articles, and has given talks and conducted seminars on a variety of business, cultural, and religious topics.

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